‘Afgantsy’ by Rodric Braithwaite

I’ve just reviewed this book for Europe-Asia Studies and so eventually my lengthier thoughts will see the light of day, but in the interim I just wanted to note how good this new study of the Soviet war on Afghanistan turns out to be. In essence, it doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said elsewhere, albeit often in Russian-language treatments of the war, but it brings everything together in a judicious, comprehensive and wonderfully-readable way that in my opinion make it the best overall history of the war (from the Soviet side) to date. Title notwithstanding, it doesn’t focus specifically on the actual afgantsy, the veterans (though where it does, I was personally pleased to see it drawing on my Afghanistan: the Soviet Union’s last war), but it is nonetheless full of fascinating personal experiences and anecdotes, many recounted personally to the author. A first-rate history.

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Mark Galeotti

This blog’s author, Dr Mark Galeotti has been researching Russian history and security issues since the late 1980s.

Educated at Cambridge University and the LSE, he is now a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and coordinates its Centre for European Security. He is also the director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence. Previously he has been Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, head of the History department at Keele University in the UK, an adviser at the British Foreign Office and a visiting professor at MGIMO (Moscow), Charles University (Prague) and Rutgers (Newark), as well as a visiting fellow with the ECFR.

His books include ‘Spetsnaz: Russia’s Special Forces’ (Osprey) and ‘The Vory: Russia’s super mafia’ (Yale University Press) and the edited collections ‘The Politics of Security in Modern Russia’ (Ashgate) and ‘Russian & Soviet Organized Crime’ (Ashgate) and he is a regular contributor to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Oxford Analytica and many other outlets. He is a contributing editor to Business New Europe.

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